


Love is Deadly and Metaphors are an Enabler

by Slytherwitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Extended Metaphors, F/M, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22810150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slytherwitch/pseuds/Slytherwitch
Summary: Luna Lovegood doesn't believe in love. She used to at one point, but all that love has given her is a broken home.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Pandora Lovegood, Luna Lovegood & Xenophilius Lovegood
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Love is Deadly and Metaphors are an Enabler

For all of the metaphors falling from her lips, Luna Lovegood knew that something like love was not to be conveyed in such pretty imagery.

Love is not a beautiful thing. It leads to dark outputs and is rooted in the most sinister of desires. To own a person, to love them enough to take their name and change it. To take a person and make them yours. To rewrite their history, forcing them to go with the plans of their new family instead of the dreams they have. 

Something about love sickens Luna so she cannot sugarcoat it. She can’t give it a pretty metaphor, like she was used to doing about everything else.

Love is too strong of an emotion to ever give it such a deceiving descriptor.

Before her mother died, Luna remembers her telling her about love. She’d weaken the power love holds by sweetening it up with picturesque language. Luna never saw the point in it. Love was strong enough on its own.

Her mother would call love: a garden, a flower, sweet strawberries, rainbows, sunshine. 

Luna believed these metaphors, a sense of hope for what her mother said was true, but not until after her death, knowing that these were lies. That love causes people to do irrational and selfish things, that love is all-consuming and a plague.

She learns that the love her mother held for her father got her thrown out and ripped from her family; got her stripped of the family name and dropped her to a blood-traitor. Love made her unwanted by most and shunned by the people who were closest to her.

It’s at the funeral of her mother when Luna’s preconceived notion of love, the one society repeats tirelessly again and again, shatters in front of her. When the person she loves most is killed by the thing she gave her life into, the perfectly painted picture of love fell from the frame.

  
  


Her father tries to repeat the same sentiment. Luna remembers him trying to get her to smile, brighten up, love like the little girl she used to be. But the notion of love is tainted by the death of her mother.

He would try to compare love to made up things, it was like a code at one point. The Aquavirius Maggot is the thoughts you have for the person you loved. Blibbering Humdingers are the words your lover tells you. Crumple-Horned Snorkacks is the grounding force your lover gives you. Heliopaths are the burning desire you have for your lover. Nargles are the stealers of loneliness.

It added more fuel to the fire. Her father, mad with grief, created things that didn’t exist. He made a language nobody but him and his daughter could decipher. He wasn’t like this when her mother was around, when everything was picture perfect.

Luna has changed the meanings of these animals. The Aquavirius Maggot eats away all rational thought. Blibbering Humdingers whisper sweet nothings to you and make you believe lies. Crumple-Horned Snorkacks are the restraints love gives you, not letting you become your own person. Heliopaths are the destroyed ambitions love gives you. Nargles are the thieves of rational thought.

  
  
  


Luna would never tell anybody these thoughts, much less her father. She’d put on a pretty mask and would dreamily wander off. She’d mention the creatures, hoping someone would catch on, but nobody ever does. 

They just call her Loony. Sometimes, she still believes them.


End file.
